390 research outputs found

    Materials, machines, meanings: Possible design strategies to compensate three key shortages of distributed manufacturing

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    This contribution starts by observing the low presence of “indie made”, distributed and digital fabrication based products in the everyday life of most people. We assume that this low presence is a result of limitations regarding the available physical behaviors, achievable functionalities, and accessible market, all of which can be optimized to the extreme with mass manufacturing. The paper explores possible design strategies to compensate these three key shortages of indie manufacturing for everyday life, aiming at better materials, more advanced functional “machines”, as well as alternative ways of creating meaning. To broaden the available material qualities, the discussed strategy is developing (and designing with) microstructures to simulate various materials. To enter more functional product domains, or machines, the paper suggests facilitating the integration of mass-produced functional elements (e.g. electronics) into product “shells”, realizable with distributed manufacturing. Finally, to compensate for limited distribution and marketing resources, we discuss the strategy of leaving the design project open for user interventions, focusing on the conceptual development of meaningful personalizable design. Regarding this latter, the paper also describes a design method and canvas tool, while the suggestions on materials/machines raise awareness around issues and upcoming solutions, contributing to some parts of the canvas.

    Ontology (Science)

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    Increasingly, in data-intensive areas of the life sciences, experimental results are being described in algorithmically useful ways with the help of ontologies. Such ontologies are authored and maintained by scientists to support the retrieval, integration and analysis of their data. The proposition to be defended here is that ontologies of this type – the Gene Ontology (GO) being the most conspicuous example – are a _part of science_. Initial evidence for the truth of this proposition (which some will find self-evident) is the increasing recognition of the importance of empirically-based methods of evaluation to the ontology develop¬ment work being undertaken in support of scientific research. Ontologies created by scientists must, of course, be associated with implementations satisfying the requirements of software engineering. But the ontologies are not themselves engineering artifacts, and to conceive them as such brings grievous consequences. Rather, ontologies such as the GO are in different respects comparable to scientific theories, to scientific databases, and to scientific journal publications. Such a view implies a new conception of what is involved in the author¬ing, maintenance and application of ontologies in scientific contexts, and therewith also a new approach to the evaluation of ontologies and to the training of ontologists

    Materials, machines, meanings: Possible design strategies to compensate three key shortages of distributed manufacturing

    Get PDF
    This contribution starts by observing the low presence of “indie made”, distributed and digital fabrication based products in the everyday life of most people. We assume that this low presence is a result of limitations regarding the available physical behaviors, achievable functionalities, and accessible market, all of which can be optimized to the extreme with mass manufacturing. The paper explores possible design strategies to compensate these three key shortages of indie manufacturing for everyday life, aiming at better materials, more advanced functional “machines”, as well as alternative ways of creating meaning. To broaden the available material qualities, the discussed strategy is developing (and designing with) microstructures to simulate various materials. To enter more functional product domains, or machines, the paper suggests facilitating the integration of mass-produced functional elements (e.g. electronics) into product “shells”, realizable with distributed manufacturing. Finally, to compensate for limited distribution and marketing resources, we discuss the strategy of leaving the design project open for user interventions, focusing on the conceptual development of meaningful personalizable design. Regarding this latter, the paper also describes a design method and canvas tool, while the suggestions on materials/machines raise awareness around issues and upcoming solutions, contributing to some parts of the canvas.

    Modular E-Collar for animal telemetry: an animal-centered design proposal

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    Animal telemetry is a subject of great potential and scientific interest, but it shows design-dependent problems related to price, flexibility and customization, autonomy, integration of elements, and structural design. The objective of this paper is to provide solutions, from the application of design, to cover the niches that we discovered by reviewing the scientific literature and studying the market. The design process followed to achieve the objective involved a development based on methodologies and basic design approaches focused on the human experience and also that of the animal. We present a modular collar that distributes electronic components in several compartments, connected, and powered by batteries that are wirelessly recharged. Its manufacture is based on 3D printing, something that facilitates immediacy in adaptation and economic affordability. The modularity presented by the proposal allows for adapting the size of the modules to the components they house as well as selecting which specific modules are needed in a project. The homogeneous weight distribution is transferred to the comfort of the animal and allows for a better integration of the elements of the collar. This device substantially improves the current offer of telemetry devices for farming animals, thanks to an animal-centered design process

    Ecological Psychology and Media Consumption Among Young Adults: A New Framework

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    The Pew Research Center (2010, March 1) identified three crucial “new metrics of news” (p. 2) that help to explain the appeal of new, interactive media forms among young adult news consumers. These metrics of Portability, Personalizability and Participation (Pew, 2010) highlight the rapid transformations in technology and user interests that have helped create a new manifestation of what McLuhan called an “age of anxiety” (1967/2001, pp. 8-9) in mass media industries and in mass communication education and scholarship. The purpose of this research is to investigate this very shift in how news is delivered and consumed, with particular attention to the preferences of college students for news that offers Pew’s (2010, March 1) new metrics. Which facet of news best attracts college students’ engagement? Do young adults’ media choices depend mostly on the news content or channel, or mostly on the technology through which content is delivered? This research explores these questions with new theoretical tools, combining traditional uses and gratifications theory (Blumler & Katz, 1974) with concepts from ecological psychology (Gibson, 1979; Michaels & Carello, 1981). This examination asks whether users’ preferences for Pew’s (2010) new metrics differ, based on respondents’ action goals, informational goals, or selected demographic characteristics

    A Unified And Green Platform For Smartphone Sensing

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    Smartphones have become key communication and entertainment devices in people\u27s daily life. Sensors on (or attached to) smartphones can enable attractive sensing applications in different domains, including environmental monitoring, social networking, healthcare, transportation, etc. Most existing smartphone sensing systems are application-specific. How to leverage smartphones\u27 sensing capability to make them become unified information providers for various applications has not yet been fully explored. This dissertation presents a unified and green platform for smartphone sensing, which has the following desirable features: 1) It can support various smartphone sensing applications; 2) It is personalizable; 2) It is energy-efficient; and 3) It can be easily extended to support new sensors. Two novel sensing applications are built and integrated into this unified platform: SOR and LIPS. SOR is a smartphone Sensing based Objective Ranking (SOR) system. Different from a few subjective online review and recommendation systems (such as Yelp and TripAdvisor), SOR ranks a target place based on data collected via smartphone sensing. LIPS is a system that learns the LIfestyles of mobile users via smartPhone Sensing (LIPS). Combining both unsupervised and supervised learning, a hybrid scheme is proposed to characterize lifestyle and predict future activities of mobile users. This dissertation also studies how to use the cloud as a coordinator to assist smartphones for sensing collaboratively with the objective of reducing sensing energy consumption. A novel probabilistic model is built to address the GPS-less energy-efficient crowd sensing problem. Provably-good approximation algorithms are presented to enable smartphones to sense collaboratively without accurate locations such that sensing coverage requirements can be met with limited energy consumption

    The evaluation of ontologies: Editorial review vs. democratic ranking

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    Increasingly, the high throughput technologies used by biomedical researchers are bringing about a situation in which large bodies of data are being described using controlled structured vocabularies—also known as ontologies—in order to support the integration and analysis of this data. Annotation of data by means of ontologies is already contributing in significant ways to the cumulation of scientific knowledge and, prospectively, to the applicability of cross-domain algorithmic reasoning in support of scientific advance. This very success, however, has led to a proliferation of ontologies of varying scope and quality. We define one strategy for achieving quality assurance of ontologies—a plan of action already adopted by a large community of collaborating ontologists—which consists in subjecting ontologies to a process of peer review analogous to that which is applied to scientific journal articles

    Critical Success Factors of Location-Based Services

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    Location-based services evolved with the advancement in mobile technology and wireless technology. Researchers have studied location-based services in terms of privacy, trust, and user acceptance. Statistics suggest the percentage of location-based services users is still relatively low. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to gain a comprehensive and holistic understanding of the critical success factors of location-based services. The electronic brainstorming approach was used to gather the opinions of an expert group of practitioners, researchers, and users on the critical success factors of location-based services. Through grouping similar factors together based on past literature, 15 categories of critical success factors were developed. These 15 categories were ranked and rated according to importance. The results showed that speed, real-time or up-to-date information, cost, usefulness or benefits, and simple or ease of use are the five most important critical success factors. The results of this research highlight potential areas of research, and research and development. The results of this study also provide guidelines for practitioners to create a competitive location-based services strategy to increase consumer adoption. Advisor: Keng L. Sia

    Transforming pedagogy using mobile Web 2.0

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    Blogs, wikis, podcasting, and a host of free, easy to use Web 2.0 social software provide opportunities for creating social constructivist learning environments focusing on student-centred learning and end-user content creation and sharing. Building on this foundation, mobile Web 2.0 has emerged as a viable teaching and learning tool, facilitating engaging learning environments that bridge multiple contexts. Today’s dual 3G and wifi-enabled smartphones provide a ubiquitous connection to mobile Web 2.0 social software and the ability to view, create, edit, upload, and share user generated Web 2.0 content. This article outlines how a Product Design course has moved from a traditional face-to-face, studio-based learning environment to one using mobile Web 2.0 technologies to enhance and engage students in a social constructivist learning paradigm. Keywords: m-learning; Web 2.0; pedagogy 2.0; social constructivism; product desig
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